Edinburgh council should be ashamed of Princes Street, it's truly awful. During the whole time I lived in Edinburgh and when visiting I avoided it like the plague. I think I only visited Princes Street about four times (once to buy a mobile phone :) and the others for work and an interview). The real gem is George Street, but council seem to be doing there damnedest to make a mess of that as well.
The Royal Mile is a bloody awful tartan covered tourist trap despite having some fantastic buildings.
My favourite part of Edinburgh is Leith and the shore area. I lived just off of the bottom of Leith walk and always loved dawdling across Leith Links to work in Great Michael house.
Thanks for sharing that map it's fascinating. Quite eery that knife-shaped area of orange/red in the west of Edinburgh from Sighthill into Haymarket - it is so pronounced and so contained between the train lines. I used to take the bus out from the city to Heriot-Watt University and both 25 and 34 routes zig-zag through that area and it's a bit grim. Playing 5-aside in the pitches at Sighthill was also a fun adventure.
Been around in other cities for as long as I remember. The nearest junction to where I grew up in Glasgow in the 80's allowed crossing in all directions at one time.
You do know that we have a lot of cobbled streets here in Edinburgh? ;-)
On a serious note - I think the ongoing billion pound Great Tram Fiasco resulted in a lot of streets being left half-repaired for a long time as they were once part of the ever-shrinking tram route. Either that or the council is saving money on road repairs to help pay for it.
Or it might be part of the ongoing attempt to discourage driving in the city - which I don't mind as I pretty much walk everywhere!
While being a spectacular street to walk along - the actual shops are pretty dreary. Last time I checked there were 3 O2 mobile phone shops.... which seems a bit much for one street that isn't that long.
I got the same advice in Edinburgh. Apparently the old crazy roads and verticality really don’t translate well into a 2D-ish plane and route finding algorithm!
There used to be a chap who commuted through central Edinburgh on a unicycle - over Dean Bridge through the New Town and up the Mound towards the Old Town.
Based on what I've heard about Edinburgh's potholes a puddle is more akin to a massive lake rather than a small puddle. In fact I heard last week there was an where an eight stories tall crustacean from the protozoic era was residing in the Edinburgh potholes and asking for tree-fiddy.
Induced demand is a thing, make driving less convenient, and more people will take the tube/crossrail/bus.
There are plenty of examples of successful pedestrianised shopping streets, e.g. Stroget in Copenhagen, Buchanan St closer to home in Glasgow, La Rambla in Barcelona.
Doing some rough measurements in Google Maps, Oxford St is roughly the same width (if not slightly wider based on the samples I measured) than La Rambla. And our weather is marginally better than Cophenhagen and Glasgow, so one can't attribute success only to nice weather.
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